


What Pours Out of Me

by vodkaanddebauchery



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: F/F, Femslash, Genderswap, Ira has a lot of feelings, Minor Violence, Rule 63, Swords & Fencing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-22
Updated: 2012-08-22
Packaged: 2017-11-12 15:52:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/492967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vodkaanddebauchery/pseuds/vodkaanddebauchery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ira’s known how to hold a sword since she was three years old. Bo’s known how to hold a sword since roughly ten minutes ago. Accidents happen.<br/>Inspired by some lovely genderswap fanart on tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Pours Out of Me

**Author's Note:**

> Pab’s lovely genderbent fanart of Bolin and Iroh proved more inspirational than is perhaps convenient. And, well, I will take any excuse for LoK femslash that I can get.

“I am _so sorry_.”

Ira throws her hands up for the umpteenth time. She’s pacing back and forth in front of Bo’s bed, eyebrows so knit together with worry that they might never come untangled. 

“That’s apology number nineteen,” the earthbender says. “I get it, General. I already said I don’t mind.” 

Wouldn’t you know it, she actually looks like she doesn’t mind at all. What sets Bolin apart from the rest of the crew - and she’s a member of the crew now, that will never not be strange to Ira - is that anyone else would either be sulking and reaching for painkillers and ointments, or playing tough in an attempt to impress her. Hell, Ira knows that there are some fresh Fire Nation recruits who would be sobbing and writing home in tears.  
But no. Bo’s sitting up on her borrowed cot in the sick bay, holding a towel to the fresh gash angled across her shoulder and upper arm. A sticky stream of drying blood down the entire left side of her undershirt that makes Ira a little sick to look at, but the way her apologies slide off the cheerful earthbender make it seem like they’re at a garden party, and not like Ira had just sliced her open. 

And thinking about that makes Ira feel _really_ sick. 

If analyzed in technical terms, it would - _technically_ \- be Bolin’s fault. Ira can’t stop replaying the events of that morning over and over in her mind’s theater. The young woman’s cheeks flushed with the exertion of training and the hollers from her crewmates, the arch to her brow just bordering on cocky as she hefted the blade in one hand, testing its weight.  
It was only supposed to be a training bout, a treat for the crew to broaden their knowledge of martial arts as several had never even been in the same room as a swordsman before, but in hindsight everything is clearer, and in hindsight Ira knew that she should have started with bamboo swords.  
Bo had good instincts for a beginner, doubtless honed from years in the arena. Feint, duck, the kiss of steel. Ira reigned herself in because being trained in the art since the age of three provided an unfair advantage, but Bolin managed to keep her on her toes for longer than fifty seconds. That was long enough for the other trainees who had been milling around bored, to gather around them in a wide circle and watch them dance, occasionally hollering advice and encouragement - the majority of it for Bolin, of course.  
They met again in the middle, Bolin on the defensive but the set of her shoulders speaking of another offense on the horizon, a parry - 

\- Ira’s blade knocked askew off of Bolin’s just as Bolin moved just so - 

\- The vibrating of ripping through fabric, barely any resistance as the blade hit the meat of Bolin’s shoulder and sliced clean and true through her skin - 

\- a jagged angle from the downward stroke, blood welling up around the cut and the split-second realization between the two of them - 

That had been an hour ago. Now they’re here in the sick bay, Ira stationed firmly at the foot of Bolin’s bed. Thanks to a healer’s handiwork the worst of the bleeding stopped, but application of a towel and steady pressure is required until one of the medics on duty can devote their full attention to the wound.  
Unluckily, a bout of northern Polar Flu had ripped through the fleet in the past week, and the on-duty medics all have their hands full with dispensing medicine, mopping brows, and trying not to get thrown up upon. 

Bolin’s uniform shirt is draped over the edge of the bed. The cut across the fabric is neat, barely any fraying in the weave, and it’s already gone a dark rust colour. Bo must see her looking at it, thoughts plainly visible, because she sits up a little straighter and wiggles her feet at the General - which is a strange thing to do, until Ira realizes that she doesn’t have a hand free to wave at her. 

“Hey, don’t make that face,” she says. “It’s stopped hurting, I just need to get it looked at and I’ll be fine! See, it’s no big deal, stop worrying about it, please?”  
Ira’s mouth twists. “You’ll have a scar. I hurt you, a member of my own crew. You’re supposed to trust me as much as I trust you, and how can you trust when I go around - when I go around stabbing and scarring you?”  
“Not a big one!” It looks like Bo has to visibly restrain herself from waving her hands; a shadow of a wince passes across her face. Liar. “I’ll have a story to tell my grandkids. ‘This is from when the youngest General in the United Forces Navy dueled me! I was winning, mind you kids, when -’” 

Ira groans in despair, planting her face in her palms. “No, Bolin, you don’t understand how serious this is.”  
“I’m pretty sure I do,” the earthbender says. “If this is about your honor, then I’ll tell the grandbabies that you were winning and gave me the scar as a condition of letting me escape with my life, and hey, it’s something exciting to write home to Mako about -”  
“Your sister will _kill me_ for not being more careful with you,” Ira murmurs. And it’s true - one of Mako’s conditions for letting her sister join Ira’s crew was having the General’s word that she would watch out for Bolin. It was one of the stranger clauses attached to being included in the Avatar’s social circle. “But Bolin, I could have taken your _arm_ off if I wasn’t - if I hadn’t -”  
“Then I could have been a pirate.”  
“Or if you had moved to the left I could have -” And Ira stops, growing cold at the thought. She absolutely will not entertain that possibility. 

Her chest feels a little tight, suddenly. She wonders if maybe she should call for another healer. 

“But,” Bolin points out, “I didn’t. I’m here, in one piece. Tada!”  
And she actually does take her hand from her bloodstained towel, making a little ostentatious waving gesture, as if to say, _You didn’t accidentally decapitate me, hooray!_ But it’s short-lived, and she actually hisses in pain as the motion apparently jostled the cut against the towel. 

“Idiot,” Ira says. She sits down next to Bo, puts her own hands on the towel to keep up the pressure. “You’ll start bleeding again.” “See,” says Bolin, giving Ira a smile. “It’s not that bad, because you’re here to patch me up.” 

Ira’s head goes a little swimmy, to match her tight chest. She blinks and tries to focus on holding the cloth up to Bolin’s wound and not move it too much, but all she really wants to do is lay her head on Bolin’s uninjured shoulder and breathe so all the thoughts of what could have gone wrong don’t pile down on her. 

Eventually a healer remembers that the General and the earthbender are on the bed tucked towards the back of the hospital wing, and shoos Ira off so she can take a closer look at the wound and concentrate fully on healing it. Ira knows when she’s not needed and slinks out of the sickbay, holding Bolin’s uniform shirt for some reason, towards the mess hall. 

  


Breakfast is long since over, a small blessing considering Ira doesn’t think she can face the mealtime gossip about the morning’s sword training lesson, but there’s a tray of leftover cheese buns and fruit tucked into the icebox, which Ira snags and brings to Bolin’s quarters. The earthbender has an appetite, and Ira’s willing to do anything to assuage her guilt right now.  
Bo’s quarters are small and cramped but empty, her dorm-mate presumably on duty - Ira’s never been in them before, but doesn’t feel right about snooping past looking at the small framed picture of the Fire Ferrets in full pro-bending gear, Korra smiling in the middle, next to Bolin’s bunk. She sets the food on the room’s furnished desk, the slashed and bloody uniform on the bunk, and waits. 

Ira’s a sensible woman. Ambitious, yes, but she thinks things through and weighs all the options. When she does follow her impulses, they tend to turn out well. She’s the first woman to earn the rank of General in the United Forces, and yes, the youngest besides. She’s got her head on her shoulders and knows where she’s going, sure as she knows the weight of her coat and the polished shine of her boots.  
Logically, she shouldn’t have time for this, to get bent out of shape over an accident. Accidents happen daily on a ship this large with this many crew. Inevitable. But it’s different, with Bolin. Ira’s long nurtured a soft spot for the earthbender but makes a conscious effort to only keep it as a fond sort of affection, nothing more. She is, after all, a General, and a very busy woman. And the difference in their ages gnaws at her conscience, on top of that. 

Ira’s never acknowledged what she has in Bolin - what feelings she has for Bolin - until she’s come less than a foot from losing it. Everything she’s been so good at shoving back, at hiding behind walls of propriety and excuses, come spilling out with a single slash of a blade. 

The door opens and Bolin, looking peaky but patched up, enters. She starts at finding her chambers occupied.  
“Hey, General Ira. Lookie here, good as new!” She points at the thick white line running a diagonal across her shoulder and arm, so pale compared to the tone of her skin. “The medic said that it’d be some time before the muscles got back to normal, though, and I’ve got to put this awful stuff on it three times a day, but - hey, is that food?” 

And she slaps the tub of healing balm on the desk next to the plate and tucks in, polishing off the two buns and bowl of fruit in record time. “That’s - that’s good, thank you, I was really hungry because we missed breakfast. Gimme a hand? I gotta get this shirt off and I’m still a little sore...”  
Her fingers flirt with the hem of her undershirt before Ira realizes what she’s talking about.  
“Oh. Oh, right. Yes, one second.” Delicately, Ira holds the hem of the undershirt between two fingers and pulls the side over Bolin’s upraised right arm and head, very pointedly looking at the ceiling. It takes a bit of wrangling to coax it off of her sore left arm - Ira has to look at the white scar that she put there. 

Her stomach feels like it’s plummeting, for all Bolin is cheerful and standing nonchalant in her bra and uniform trousers not a foot away. Which, really, doesn’t help matters.  
“The ointment smells really bad, and I’m sorry, but could you help me apply it?” Bolin snags the jar from next to her empty plate and offers it to Ira, who knows guilt won’t let her say no. She unscrews the cap. 

The stuff reeks like a sky bison’s morning breath and it’s a stomach-turning shade of bright yellow-green, but Ira de-gloves and dips her fingers into the viscous goo. “Hate to make you do this,” Bolin’s saying when Ira lifts out two coated fingers, “but the angle is sort of awkward and I can’t tell if I’ve got it all covered.”  
“It’s fine,” says Ira. Bolin’s skin is warm when she presses the lightest touch to the skin just under the white edge of the scar, where it tapers to a clean point. Bolin heaves a little sigh - the relief from the soreness must be instantaneous - which startles Ira, but she dips her finger into the pot for more salve and paints it up the length of the scar. 

“I realize I’ve said this before,” she murmurs, rubbing the goo into the raised scar tissue, “but I’m so very sorry, Bolin. I’d give anything to take it back, if I could.”  
The younger woman huffs. “That’s, what, your twentieth apology? You could go for a record there, General.”  
“I know. But I am.” Ira smears another glob towards the top of the scar with her thumb. “I never want to hurt you again, Bolin. I know this was just an accident and that accidents happen, but...” She swallows.“I care about you very much, Bo. Thinking about how I could have done you very serious harm upsets me more than I thought possible, which is why I’m unable to smile it off like you do.” 

Her eyes are fixed at the pointed tip of the scar cresting over Bolin’s pale shoulder. Never mind all of her fearlessness and bravado in the face of surging storm and the threat of battle, suddenly looking at Bolin seems like the most daunting thing in the world. She plows on, unable to make herself stop, thinking maybe if she just tries, Bolin will understand what she means.  
“And it’s amazing, how you’re able to smile and laugh and keep _me_ from being upset, when you’re the one who should be - well, I wouldn’t blame you for being upset with me, but it’s the other way around. You’re...a very remarkable woman, Bolin. And I’m such a fool, to have to injure you like this before I realize how dear you are to me.” 

Under her fingers Bolin’s gone very still, like a figure carved from marble with a pale seam of stone running down her arm, or how a threat shocks a deer into stillness. Ira clears her throat and applies the salve to the edge of the scar. Getting it over with and rubbing the last of it into her skin so she can step away seems like a good idea now.  
“I’m sorry if that was untoward,” she murmurs, cheeks flushing pink. “I can - leave now, if you would like to rest -” 

“Ira.” Bolin interrupts her. “Ira, if - don’t - stop moving backwards while I’m talking you, don’t leave, okay?” The General stops moving backwards towards the door. Bolin picks at the fabric of her undershirt. “I don’t _like_ being hurt, same as anyone else, but I don’t want you to keep saying you’re sorry and getting all awkward with me over this.”  
“Bo -” Feeling her throat constrict around something that wasn’t there a second ago, Ira’s expression must be alarming, because Bolin rushes to continue.  
“I mean, I’m not - I don’t want you to keep beating yourself up over this, okay? Because I care about you too, and I don’t want to see you do that to yourself. I _know_ you will,” she adds. “I’ll heal up just fine. I’m not mad at you, or anything. Matter of fact, If I had to get hurt like this, I’m glad that it was you who did it. I trust you, Ira.”  
“I - I trust you too,” Ira manages to rasp past the lump in her throat. Trust is a poor substitute for something else, something she can’t say just yet, and Bolin must see that - because she steps forward and wraps her uninjured arm around Ira’s waist, pulling her forward. In close proximity the difference in their heights is marked, but Ira doesn’t mind because her forehead rests against the soft skin of Bo’s shoulder. Her hands reach to rest at the swell of Bolin’s hips, where the waistband of her trousers meets the flesh of her sides, and stay there just to rest. 

At the crown of her head she feels the press of a kiss, Bolin’s lips and nose against her and breath ruffling strands of her hair.  
“If this is what it took,” Bolin murmurs against her, “then I should have dueled you much earlier.”  
“Don’t even joke. The worrying took years off my life. Tomorrow I’ll wake up with gray hairs because you thought dueling me was a good idea.”  
“Yeah? I’d like to see that.”  
Ira peels away. “What, my gray hair holds some sort of appeal for you?”  
“Nah, you waking up does,” Bolin says, and kisses her for real.


End file.
